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One of my favourite pieces of medical trivia is the existence of "Paris Syndrome". Essentially, it is a form of disappointment so severe that it causes nervous breakdown.

First noted in Japanese tourists, it strikes visitors to Paris who, under the influence of a thousand idealising books and films, expect it to be a kind of cultural paradise on Earth, with food and manners to match.

For some of these unfortunates the city's reality - brusque and often urinous - comes as such a shock that they literally go mad. Symptoms range from depression and dissociation right through to persecution mania and suicidal impulses - at their most acute, the same outward signs as schizophrenia.